PhoneGap is RAD!

I have been evaluating the PhoneGap mobile application framework for about a month now and so far I’ve been really impressed!

The PhoneGap website describes the framework as “…and HTML5 app platform that allows you to author native applications with web technologies and get access to APIs and app stores. PhoneGap leverages web technologies developers already know best…HTML and Javascript”.

The framework is really a RAD (rapid application development) tool to accelerates a n applications development time. To test this theory/promise out, I decided to develop an application on the PhoneGap framework. The application is called MyCiti which has the routes and times for Cape Town’s MyCiti bus system. While PhoneGap can target the major platforms like iOS, BlackBerry and Meego(Nokia), I settled on Android, since I own an Android device and this application would be useful for me. To my excitement, I was able to put together a pretty slick-looking (terribly static) application using JQueryMobile after about 3 hours of coding….PhoneGap delivered on their promise!

*PhoneGap was developed by the mad scientists at Nitobi in 2009 as their submission to the Web 2.0 Expo Launchpad competition.